


Like Fish in a Bowl

by lets_keep_walking



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: F/M, Memory Loss, Spoilers, Susie's an ass, little lotta theorizing, lotsa confusing feelings folks, no duh shitlock, sarcastic Bendy is best Bendy, slight BendAlice, started out as a thought, takes place before Henry's arrival, then i wrote 5k and decided to do something with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 01:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12288183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lets_keep_walking/pseuds/lets_keep_walking
Summary: What happens in the halls of the studio are of little buffer to stop bad things from happening and memories from fading away. Alice and Suzie know this for a fact and deal with it the best they can.Which also means in the worst possible way. But then someone suspiciously familiar comes along.





	Like Fish in a Bowl

**Author's Note:**

> I STILL LOVE ALICE OKAY. I don't get how everyone just jumped off the Alice bandwagon so quickly? I mean, hell yeah am I up for rescuing Boris but c'mon. Show this pretty little angel some love, huh?
> 
> Also I just got back from a big operation, and I wrote this before I left, and I just wanted something for you guys while I rest up. Thank you for being patient with me!

Beautiful.

Absolutely, irrevocably, beautiful.

_No matter what Joey says._

It's a promise, a chant. Five little words strung together with hate and malice and cautious hope. She whispers it to herself whenever she's facing a spell. She mutters it under her breath as she stomps amalgamations into the floorboards. She screams it at herself in the mirror, at the waning lights of her powder room, as she glares at her face, broken, grotesque, and still, oh, so _beautiful_.

 It's true, too. She took the old cutouts of herself and plastered them everywhere, pretty little angels hanging from ceilings, posing on the walls, smiling lovingly with wings as white as snow protruding from their backs. She finds old posters of her old episodes and pastes them up and around the place; she likes how the angel in the posters and cutouts look. Petite, with thick hair and a charming grin, the halo glowing golden above their heads.

It's a nice look, and a good reference for what to do when she gains all the ink to make herself whole again.

But when she finds posters, they're usually accompanied by someone else. About her size with a wide cheshire grin of their own, and both hands at their side, the tips of their horns glinting dangerously in the dim light.

When she first finds this stranger she's...initially confused. But part of her, a part so dormant and a voice so quiet, lights up in remembrance and familiarity.

She...she knew this person. Knows this person. And when she peers closer she finds that they've both have the same bow slapped onto the front of their chests, the angel and the stranger, standing next to each other.

She doesn't know how to feel about them. But they'd probably wince just at seeing at her, her left eye blacked out except for a tiny little divot on the side (she learns later what "pie-eyes" are called), with her jaw ripped out on the right side of her face. Strips of her mouth connect her top and bottom lip together, and she has to curl her lips in a certain way in order for her mouth to open wide enough for her to speak.

They would hate her, if they met her with the way she looks like now. Hideous, monstrous, ugly, a _mistake_.

She can't let that happen.

She can't take another heartbreak.

While she was primarily devastated by her looks (she was supposed to be an angel, not some black-armed mutilated _freak_ , for pete's sake) she soon found that living ink was perfect in order to get herself together again.

So she did it.

She roamed her halls, searching for monsters, and was terrified at first (ink everywhere, so much of it, cold and slimy and _lifeless_ ) before she realized how weak they were. A quick punch to the face had them down. A jab in the middle had them screeching with a mix of differentiated voices. Stomping on them was quick and seamless, and plus, she didn't have to think about whether or not she used to know the person she killed.

Then again, she doesn't have all of her memories. Just glimpses and flashes of a beautiful angel and people who loved her for her beauty, and then memories of her falling, falling, useless, unnecessary, unwanted, _unloved_.

If becoming beautiful is a way for everyone to rebuff and demur what they said about her, then she'll do it. Anything to takes to prove that she's wanted, she's loved, that she wasn't what she was called.

It wasn't wrong, _she_ wasn't wrong, to take the center stage, the limelight, for herself again.

Oh, but of course it wouldn't be so easy.

When she first came to, it was with blissful ignorance. For a moment she was gone, suspended into the depths of her slumber, floating on clouds of transcendent and ethereal bliss.

And then the cloying smell of rotting ink hit her senses so quick that she pulled herself out of her position and nearly screamed.

She was on the floor, the floorboards around her black with ink, her ink, and when she moved to stand, she tripped. The walls around her were barely familiar, strange words hastily smeared onto the walls, with strings and dollops of ink... _everywhere_. Caked on the furniture, streaked onto the floor, even hanging from the fucking ceiling.

Something terrible happened there, where she woke up, and she was in no mood to find out why, just gather herself up and get outta there. She collected her ink as quickly as she could, willing it to sink into her and replace what was lost.

Then there came the thundering, pounding footsteps and the sobbing, helpless, _angry_ wails from above, accompanied by the eerily familiar sound of ink surging through pipes, and she felt her metaphorical blood chill.

Stumbling to her feet, with no time to wonder about why the state of the studio had gotten so awry and filling up with righteous fear, she hurried down stairwells and staircases, trying to hide herself, but unknowing of where or what to hide from. There were one of her stations nearby, and she sighed in relief as she slipped inside one of them.

She had to physically restrain herself from screaming when a massive wall of ink walked right past her only a few minutes later. She peeked out the door only when she was sure it was safe, and then tried to find some place to lay low for a little while.

She used her flickering memory (although it was more of a nuisance than a help, leading her to dead ends, trying to remember hallways that don't exist) to try and find her way through. As she did so, she found that ink was still marked on everything. She didn't understand. Joey always took pride in keeping the studio clean, the only thing that should be this filthy was—

The ink machine. _The ink machine_. She nearly topples over at the fresh wave of memories she gets when she thinks about it. A woman sobbing into her hands, rope tied and taught and _bloody_ and screams permeating through the air.

_"I tried to tell ya, Miss Campbell," a voice warned sadly, but something about it was fake. There was a cruel sneer to his frown, a crinkle in his eyes, like he was actually enjoying what he was doing._

_"Ya wanted ta be Alice, and, frankly, this is the price t'pay."_

She pulled the fabric of her dress up to her mouth to muffle her harsh gasps as her thoughts flashed with a white hot ring of pain. It left as quickly as it came, her screams carrying on a surprised groan when it faded away, with one name, angry and helpless, bubbling to her lips.

" _Joey_."

Fucking.

 _Drew_.

He seemed to be the cause of everyone's problems, wasn't he? As she pushed on, she found tape recordings of her coworkers, why someone would leave them in such a precarious situation (and how they were all in somehow perfect condition) baffled her, but they all shared the same thing.

Anger, resentment, fear, heartbreak, all because of _him_.

It made her wonder, oh so long ago, what he had done to warrant all those cruel words and hapless tears. But that quiet part of her flickered to life, satisfied, like that was something it wanted for a very long time.

But that didn't matter. She carried as much of them as she could and decided to take them with her. It was nice to hear a voice that wasn't constantly moaning in despair, you know?

She ended up finding the old toy factory, her old powder room, the little television sets emitting tinny voices that sounded like her singing. When she tried to sing along she found that her talent was still there, just wheezy with disuse.

It wouldn't be like that for long if she had her way.

And really, once she found the old records, all of her memorabilia lined up and ready to be sold like it was just another Tuesday at work, the proof of how useless and arbitrary she was, she just...took a walk.

Through the halls. Kept an eye out for the screeching wall of ink. Took out a couple of monsters on the way. Kept a pace slow enough to gather her thoughts. Firmly strayed from the puddles.

But when she saw her reflection in a cracked mirror, her left side of her face was left unblemished, but the right...the right looked like someone wrecked it to next Sunday.

She had gasped, and watched her face contort in the mirror, her pie-eye releasing unholy amounts of ink at the sight.

Memories coming unbidden spill into her head, _sales are starting to decline, it costs more to make these stupid things then to actually sell 'em, nobody's even watchin' 'er on TV nowadays, maybe we shouldn't've..._

They didn't want her.

And when she had looked at her face in the mirror, she soon understood why.

* * *

When she first began to gather ink for herself it was messy. Trying to use her hands just made it worse, being able to grip it, something warm and stifling and _alive_ , trying to get out of her grip and into a puddle somewhere. She hates whenever that happens—she knows what it's like to be trapped in those puddles, so many voices, so little space, everyone vying for control, all of them wanting to get up and _move_. If they manage to think coherently for long enough they'd eventually take the form of something resembling human, but they’re murky and distant, voices distorted and unwilling in their despair.

How could any of them stand _living_ like that?

She's seen how they try to defend themselves, too. Throwing punches and jabs with about as much strength as flippant gestures, sloppy and uncoordinated, and they scream when she takes them down and absorbs the ink she needs.

She hears the voices, before she squashes them into nothing, refusing to become anything like the puddles strewn haphazardly all over the buildings.

But she still hears one of them. One soft, sweet, fitting for the angel she sees on the posters and walls. The voice is familiar to her, somehow. It's the crying, screaming, pleading woman she sees in her dreams. Some of the cassette tapes belong to the voice, and she's crying in one of them, too.

It talks to her, constantly, non-stop, like it needs it to survive, like it's running out of time, like her attention's a _prize_.

_Don't you get it? Don't you understand? Destroy them!_

_Purge them one by one! Smash them into puddles, kill them!_

And there's a name to the voice, but she tries very hard not to think about it too much. It hates when she does that.

She doesn't use her hands to gather ink anymore. She uses a syringe, instead.

* * *

To be honest, this wasn't what Suzie had in mind.

While, yes, her initial plan was to try and separate herself form the puddles, she never really saw herself into becoming...Alice.

But she was desperate. In there, those little pools of ink so seemingly harmless and inanimate were stirring with memories and anger and resentment. Everyone was angry at why they'd be left behind, what'd happened, how Joey could've turned them all into _this_. And coupled with the mind-numbing hopelessness of the situation, it gave Suzie (or, what was left of her, she doesn't really remember much anymore) an idea.

A crazy, nutty, _insane_ idea.

Which, given the circumstances, had more chances of working than anything else. Sammy did it. Why couldn't she?

She separated herself from the puddles, but only because she attached herself to something else. And it had to be something that could easily come to mind, something that was hers, solely and irrevocably so.

 _Alice_.

She really could fix this, she could fix everything, all she had to do was collect herself and begin anew. She started surrounding herself with memories of the angel, yes, sing like this, be like that, curl your hair up this way, so she'd never go back, not again, nor _ever_ , into those stupid little spills of numbing frustration. She even found the real Alice, too, and coerced her into joining with her.

Joey could change the listings in the credits all he wants, but it doesn't change that Suzie was first. _She's_ Alice, was _always_ Alice, and will _remain_ Alice, sweet and, kind, and _beautiful_.

_No matter what Joey says._

* * *

There are moments when words don't reach. There's suffering too terrible to name. Hell, maybe. Sharing a destabilizing body with two people, sure. Hearing familiar voices in the screams of the monsters in the moments before she kills them, almost, but not quite.

No, it's when she's pinned to the wall by a snarling, hissing, painfully familiar cheshire grin.

She was only taking a stroll down one of the hallways, side-stepping pools ink and taking quick steps, more of the usual, really. Take down a couple of monsters here, rearrange a crooked poster there, and suddenly, out of literally fucking nowhere, way, _way_  too much ink is _everywhere_. No warning. It all just faded into view. On the walls, the ceiling, her skin, even, and in the air, too!

She only has time to audibly question it before something in the corner of her eye tenses, flinches, and then whirls around in quick succession towards her, so fast that for a near second all she could see was a streak of black before firm hands clenched around her shoulders and slammed her against the nearest wall.

They're _hissing_.

It sounds like they're screaming, but the sounds aren't coming from their grin, rather, their chest. They look worse off than she does, but better than the amalgamations roaming around. They even have gloves on their hands and a white bowtie-

_\- when she peers closer she finds that they've both have the same bow slapped onto the front of their chests, the angel and the stranger, standing next to each other._

Her mind makes the connection before she realizes it does.

But the last thing she's going to do is welcome them with open arms.

She focuses and reacts; her right heel acquaints itself firmly with their left hip. Their smile is strained, but otherwise they hold her firmly. She continues to kick.

"I'd-" kick, "suggest-" kick, "that you let-" kick, "me go!"

They groan minutely, and produce a series of hisses.

Not gonna talk? Fine. She doesn't want to hear what they have to say anyway. She wrestles out of their grip and shove them aside, two sides in her head screaming at her to _destroy them, kill them, rip them into wet little pieces_ and _spare him, help him, and damn the gods, just HUG him._

 She's breathing harshly and glaring at her assailant, who's looking at her with morbid curiosity. Insane amounts of ink nearly obscure their face, saving only their smile as a sign of indifference to the situation; it's still strained, but lessened, and their-his? (Something tells her they're a him.) head is tilted slightly, like he's confused. (It's a memory faint that she can barely remember it, but just on the tip of her tongue and she's so close to retrieving it.)

But then his wicked grin is back and she's thrown against the wall, and—wait, did he even fucking _move_?

He nods in satisfaction, before disappearing into an ink puddle before she could catch him.

She sees him come out of another one from the corner of her eye, but he's already gone.

Furious (and more than a little embarrassed, no one's ever taken her down like that before, and so quickly, too), she tears off for her powder room, punching into walls and tearing down posters and ripping into plush dolls. For a few minutes she gives into the voice, the one screaming and insisting that she maul and destroy and _maim_ , sweeping her burning _rage_ across the factory with a wide hand and a bloodcurdling screech.

There's something about him, something important that she's forgotten, and she feels it in her gut, that she _needs_ to know.

She rips another poster to shreds.

He...he _knows_. He _knows_ that she's missing something and he's _laughing_ at her for it. That's the only plausible reason he has that _knowing_ little grin of his.

There's one of her poster's with him on it. She destroys it.

She'd show him. Next time she finds him she's going to kill him. Smear his ink around her walls like a prize. Carry is head around like a trophy. Maybe even absorb some of him, too. See how he'd like _that_.

She finds one of his cutouts, he's standing and smiling and he's _taunting_ , and she wrenches an axe from the side of the wall and hacks him to soft little cardboard pieces.

"Who's laughing now?" she rasps. "Who's laughing _now_?"

She finds a few more of them, and they don't live to see another day. She rids her territory of the sight of him, wanting and willing and angry about forgetting, but she needs to. She has to.

That other little part of her, tiny and quiet in comparison to the voice she hears in her head, flickers to life at the pieces of him in her hands, and before she's questioning it she's sobbing, collapsing to her knees and crushing the pieces close to her chest.

She didn't...she didn't _mean_ to hurt her friend...

_Friend?_

_That thing could've touched me! It could've pulled us back!_

_Don't you remember what it's like? Living in the dark puddles? Do you want to go back?_

Regretfully, she finds herself stomping down the part of her that's crying helplessly and hops to her feet. She has a mission, and she isn't going to let stupid personal feelings get in her way, no matter how complicated or unnerving.

First, though...she needs to clean up and repair the damage to her domain.

* * *

He was _so_ _happy_ when he'd first seen Alice. Hey, _maybe_ they could get some answers on the what the hell actually happened to the studio? _Maybe_ they could go and find Boris and they could all be together, if not, happy again? Was that too much to fucking ask for?

But no, turns out the woman he sees isn't her, just, not completely, and frankly, he's disgusted with what he's looking at. Never mind the gruesome look to her face, that's _two people_ sharing _one_ _body_. What the hell was Suzie _thinking_? He's no rocket scientist but he knows that's too unstable and she's going to collapse, any second now.

Seconds turned to weeks.

Weeks turned to months.

He still saw her roaming around. He watches her constantly, whether to wait for the moment she finally does collapse or trying to stop his heart from giving traitorous little leaps of joy when he sees her.

He knows that his Alice is in there. He can see it in the tired lines on her face, in the tears gushing haplessly from her lone little pie-eye, in the fatigue she pretends to hide as she walks.

He had no fucking clue was he was doing when he first approached her. Being a fool, sure. Something stupid, probably. Goading a crazed she-demon into talking to him so he could get his friend back?

Mission im-fucking- _possible_.

He has no idea how, but she _hides_. In parts of the factory that's he's searched and searched, she hides from him, like she knows he's looking for her. And combined, the anger at what she's become and the vigor of his search and the bone-deep sadness he's accumulating from not fucking _doing_ anything is what propels him to pin her to the wall that night.

She was so scared, for a brief second. And in that second he saw her, _really saw her_ , the Alice that would put salt in Joey's coffee if he teased her too much, the girl that would switch bows with him to see if he noticed, the angel sitting atop piano, singing while he played, her eyes crinkled in her mirth whenever she smiled.

He likes her best when she's scared, because for a second he can pretend that she's not possessed by her own voice actor (who needs to get her schediaphilia in order, that's for sure) and that they're still friends, and he's just paying another one of his pranks on her.

But then her face contorts into sharp anger, and she kicks, _Alice fucking kicks him_ , insisting that he let her go.

Does she not remember anything?

She wrestles out of his grip, and he's both incensed with his anger and curious, because he sees her fidget for a moment and her human eye widens for a fraction of an inch.

But it's enough for him to notice, and, to put an out to his anger(she can't imagine how this feels, to see someone you love and knowing you can't do a thing to help them), he sends her flying across the room to the other wall, leaving her dazed and confused, and—he grins wickedly— shaking with rage because he knows his Alice; she always hated when he teased her.

He's only further proven when he hears her muffled shriek of anger and her stomping on the floor above him, and his grin only widens til' it nearly hurts him.

He isn't so sure the next time he sees her, though. Out of nowhere, he remembered that she'd had a room she used before the animators needed her for reference poses.

Needless to say, he shot up those stairs faster than the studio could come up with employee safety regulations.

He whistled tunelessly, marveling at all the memorabilia she'd acquired, even at the words in her cute little handwriting written on the walls.

Less to be said for what was actually written, though.

And then he hears her and the ink in his veins spark at the sound of her voice.

She's _singing_.

His heart throbs almost painfully, and every fiber of his being is screaming at him to _go, go, go to her_ or _at least sing along with her, you inconsiderate fucktoid,_ but he takes his time, slowly walking towards her door, and it's already opened a crack. She's facing the mirror, an ink-splattered brush in hand and an oddly tranquil expression on her face as she brushes her hair.

It's another familiar thing about her that has his heart aching. He wishes it could be like before, when he and Boris would sing along with them too, voices conjoined until it's one big impromptu musical number, only disturbed by breathless laughter and sour notes on their respective instruments.

And then he realizes what she's singing and his heart near breaks.

_"Moon beams and starlight...magical twilight,_

_The warmest ray, hear it whispering your names,_

_Rainbows at midnight, sparkling night skies_

_Don't go away, stay another day."_

That's their song. Bendy with Alice Angel in 'Sent from Above'. He remembers that episode, she was near breathless from all the singing and choreography and how close they'd been pressed together. He'd teased her relentlessly for a week after, partly enjoying how angry she'd get and the adorable little flush to her face.

Her voice is almost the same as ever, except for the deeper undertone he hears that accompanies her singing, as she languidly strokes the brush though her hair. She's smiling softly at the mirror and he sighs. That's _her_ smile.

It's too much for him to watch, so he takes his leave. Alice always did hate when he spied on her.

* * *

Over time, he runs more and more into her and is taunted and tormented by the simple truth that Alice isn't gone. Normally, he'd be happy to have her back, but she's been copied and pasted and fused with Suzie and her toxic mentality of _perfection_. If Alice is in there isn't she, y'know, busting a move? Trying to break free? Alice wouldn't just sit and twiddle her fucking thumbs in a situation this dire.

He runs into her in the halls. Her human eye widens in recognition, and he can hear the breath push past her lips in a gasp. She advances, but he just. Dodges. Moves away. He doesn't want to hurt her more than he already did (that was a stupid move, to send her flying to the wall all that time ago) and just wants to be left alone, but no, Alice wants to fight or _whatever_.

Yeah, nice to see how fighting left the both of them on the short end of the stick, whoop-de-fucking-do. What the hell does she want from him, a cookie?

He pays no heed to the ink monsters that're dumb enough to try and attack them, sidestepping them and disappearing because he's not in the mood and doesn't have the time. He wants his Alice back and nothing short of Joey's return is going to stop him.

* * *

He hears her, occasionally, on the intercom. How she was able to attain reign of that thing he has no clue, but every once in a while, he hears her telling stories, about co-workers and familiar faces. Some even on Alice, herself.

"Once upon a time, there was an angel, and she was beautiful," he hears her, one night. Her voice is tiny and breaks the silence. "And loved by all."

Her voice breaks and he hears Suzie's voice. "She was _perfect_...no matter what Joey says."

His best friend and co-worker both brought down by the same person they trusted in.

He doesn't know what to feel.

* * *

He keeps following her around.

He honestly can't just think that she doesn't notice him, right? She can see the horns protruding from a puddle of ink every so often, and makes a big show of angling away from it, huffing and putting her hands on her hips.

Does—

_Does he think she's fucking stupid?_

"Will you _quit_ _it_?" is what comes out, instead. There are horns poking out of a puddle a few feet away, and she's so fed up with trying to deal with him (she has random thoughts come to her in the night, visions of her and an awfully smaller, cleaner version of him, playing the piano and singing together) and the memories he brings and how annoyed he makes her feel that she's done with trying to be civil.

 _What're you doing?_ Suzie starts back up again. _Can't you see this is your chance? Kill him!_

She firmly tells Suzie to shut her trap.

"I know you're there. I can see you."

He doesn't reply. Did she honestly think he would?

"I don't know who you are, or why you're so important, but if I find that you're following me again I'll rip that bow from your neck and shove it down your _throat_!"

"Don't you understand?" she tries next. "Don't you get it?"

She sees his head come up from the puddle, and his smile, for once, is gone, replaced by a frown. She growls and stomps her right leg.

" _Answer me_ , _dammit_!"

When he doesn't say anything, again, she growls and charges at him, breathing past the lump in her throat, because while part of her wants to smash his face, the other part is heartbroken and angry because _why isn't her friend talking to her_?

He slips back into the puddle and out of one behind her, and she drags her heel to a stop and whirls around, glaring. It's the angel and the stranger, facing off each other.

"Tell me who you are," she insists, incensed, and before she can hold it in; "please."

He looks at her for a solid minute, head tilted, as if contemplating, and then disappears into another puddle, leaving her for only a moment before he's back again.

He's holding a poster. It's faded and ripped at the edges, and her heart leaps in her throat.

He doesn't even need to turn it around for her to read the title. She already knows the words.

_Little Devil Darlin'._

She knows why he's so familiar.

She knows why she's so conflicted when she sees him.

She knows why, even after being irrevocably angry, she still calls him her friend.

 _Bendy_.

And now that she's really acknowledging it instead of forcing it behind a steady block of denial, a tidal wave of memories floods her senses, drowning her in a sea of fond remembrance. He used to sing with her. They used to pose in the silliest ways for the animators' reference cels. If he was on the piano, she'd be there too, punching his shoulder affectionately and singing along with him.  There was someone else, a wolf, and she barely gets to hear his name before she's brought to another memory; she's standing next to a strikingly familiar woman with a nice smile and kind eyes, Ms. Campbell, she called her.

_"Alice 'n I, we're goin' places."_

He got the short end of the stick, too. He had been smaller, almost smaller than she was, and not as grotesque, the only thing similar between them being the grins of their faces.

She huffs a breathless chuckle once she's surfaced back from the inconceivable vault of her mind, and sees him—her friend, no, wait, sorry, _Bendy_ standing there, still holding the poster, and she wants to laugh, she wants to cry, she wants to crush him to her chest and dare the God above to take him away from her. She wants to shove him to the wall and run back to her powder room and continue building her legacy, but...

She...she wants...no, but she _can't_...

She comes to her knees slowly, fisting her hands in her hair, softly sobbing into her knees. She feels him sit next to her and then she's gone, the contact alone driving her crazy; she grips his shoulders and sobs into his chest helplessly, angry at herself at her submission but wanting to have at least _some_ semblance of that old normalcy back.

She shivers when she feels Suzie hiss and scream and wail at his presence, but she shakes her head, willing for the thoughts to go away.

She doesn't want to think.

Just _feel_.

And, in more ways than one, she's thankful that he lets her. He pats her head awkwardly and tries his best to hug her back, and she squeezes, breathing into his shoulder, trying to calm herself down.

It doesn't matter what happens in the next few minutes or few weeks or after; she still hangs onto him. When she smashes monsters into puddles she thinks of how he would've laughed at them. When she dresses herself up in her powder room she's hit with the memory of him helping her with her hair.

Now, mind you, Suzie still hates him with a passion, but it's become easier to tolerate her around him. She doesn't call him by his name, at least, not anymore. She saw the wince in his step when she did, once. It's for the best of the both of them that they forget what happened, that they fall back into their roles, the angel and her stranger, avoiding each other.

So, really, when you get down to it, she's still messed up and ragged and the same as ever, but while walking down her path, she's glad she doesn't have to walk it, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to explore a bit into their dynamic, seeing as Alice pretty much hates him in Chapter Three. That and there aren't enough fics of these two, dammit. "Don't Go Away" belongs to Blue Skies studios.


End file.
